Jeremiah 51:11

Medes. The question may be raised as to why both Isaiah (Isa. 13:17) and Jeremiah name the Medes as the conquerors of Babylon, when historical sources point to the conquest as having been accomplished by a coalition of Medes and Persians, in which the latter were the dominant power. The answer may be in the fact that in Isaiah’s time the Medes were already known as a people, though scarcely a united nation, and that by Jeremiah’s time they constituted a powerful empire to the north and west of Babylon, whereas in the days of neither of these prophets would a reference to the Persians have been very meaningful to the readers. For the earlier history of the Medes and Persians, see on Dan. 2:39; also Vol. Ill, pp. 50-52. It was not until 553 or 550 B.C., 40 years or more after the giving of Jeremiah’s prophecy, that Cyrus II, vassal king of Anshan under Media, and later king of Persia, asserted his independence and launched forth on a series of conquests that before his death saw the establishment of the Persian Empire, the greatest that to that time had existed. Thus in Jeremiah’s time the Medes still loomed larger in the consciousness of the neighboring peoples, and the term Medes was used to refer to the united peoples of Media and Persia in the time of Daniel (see on Dan. 6:8).

Temple. The Babylonians concretely demonstrated their rejection of Yahweh by their destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. Consequently they were to suffer “the vengeance of the Lord.”